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November 9, 2009: Responses

It is clear that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan has struck a  nerve with my readers.  I thank all of you who have sent me links to commentary on the Fort Hood jihad massacre. 
 
More and more information is being exposed, in terms of Hasan’s radical attitude and associations.  It is reported that he, a psychiatrist, actually argued with his patients — soldiers returned from war — regarding the worth of their sacrifices. And yet he was not removed, for the system, awash in PC, failed abysmally.
 
A report from ABC News says Hasan tried to connect with people from al-Qaeda.
 
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Here I share, most significantly, a powerful piece by Daniel Greenfield, writing as Sultan Knish:
 
“He is inside your borders. He works deep inside your political and social structures. Openly he expresses his support for your murderers and enthusiastically promotes his message of hate. The bumper sticker on his car reads, ‘Allah is Love’, but that love is the ‘love’ which the Koran 61:4 describes as follows, ‘Surely Allah loves those who fight in His way in ranks as if they were a firm and compact wall.’

“…The goal of the Islamists, of many of those very same Imams who ministered to Hasan’s religious questions, and the larger Saudi funded Wahhabi organizations that fund and train them, is not to create a single Nidal Malik Hasan eager to die for the Jihad, but to create tens of thousands of Hasans and thousands of Fort Hoods in the United States alone. While they smile and lie through their teeth to the media, they are already working on spinning the incident to their advantage, to play the old game so common in Europe and America of positioning themselves as the alternatives to those ‘other’ crazy Muslims like Hasan who might be tempted to take weapons in hand, if their recommendations about increasing tolerance are not followed. And the first recommendation of course is to avoid radicalizing Muslims by not attributing the attack to his Islamic beliefs.

“How they must chuckle as they urge law enforcement to suppress the truth about Islamic violence in order to avoid marginalizing and further radicalizing Muslims… even as they themselves promote radicalism, host pro-terrorist speakers and preach the Koran’s message of Jihad, death to the unbeliever and a Sharia ruled Caliphate across the earth. How they must laugh as the very law enforcement agencies that are meant to uncover and prevent crimes, instead cover up for their crimes. And they go on taking their invites to the White House, running their Islamic academies and putting out their ideology, one strain for the general American public, and another for their own boys, and beneath it of it one great engine of death humming along as it helps turn out the next Nidal Hasan…

“All the warning signs were there. Not simply for Nidal Malik Hasan, reading and hearing the same call to death over and over again for years, until he reached a decision that is considered praiseworthy within the context of the Koran… but for Islam in general.

“All the warning signs are there. They are in the Koran and in books sold in every Muslim bookstore in America and Europe. They are on tapes and on YouTube. They are in the bodies of their victims and the Muslim killers. They are there in the long flowing black Abayas and beards that mark radicalized Muslims, but they are just as there behind the false smiles of Western born and educated killers like Nidal Malik Hasan who drive around with bumper stickers reading, ‘Allah is Love’, only for his targets to realize too late that in Islam, love is indivisible from death, and that the worship of Allah is most praiseworthy when it is carried out through Jihad, the murder of infidels.

“The bloody common denominator of all these things is Islam. And while our brave and brilliant politicians insist that we are not at war with Islam, shunning and even imprisoning those who say otherwise, Islam is at war with us and has been since its inception nearly a millennium and a half ago. And will continue to be until we either once again force it back and break its momentum, or until it destroys us all.

“…The warning signs were there. The warning signs are still there. Not just for Nidal Hasan, but for Islam itself. We have seen the bodies and we have buried some of them ourselves, family, friends and fellow countrymen. We have heard the screams. We know what has been. It does not take a prophet to know what is to come.

“All the warning signs are there. The question is what are we going to do about them?”

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

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America, take heed!!

Lest you doubt what Greenfield says: 

Anwar al-Awlaki is a US-born Muslim and served as imam at Virginia mosques that were attended by both Hasan and three of the 9/11 terrorists.  (You’re reading this correctly — Hasan and 9/11 terrorists attended the same mosques.)

On his website al-Awlaki (who is now in Yemen) has posted praise for Hasan for being a “man of conscience” and doing “the right thing.” He explained that no decent Muslim could serve in the US Army, which “is directly invading two Muslim countries and indirectly occupying the rest,” unless he intends to “follow the footsteps of men like Nidal.”

Hasan’s actions, he said, had drawn attention to the essential dilemma of Muslims living in the US, who may find that they are forced to either “betray Islam or betray their nation.”

I myself firmly believe that the future of the US depends in good measure on the ability of her citizens to grapple forthrightly with all of this.

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According to Khaled Abu Toameh in today’s Post, a senior PA official said Abbas was surprised by Israeli news reports regarding secret agreements between Fayyad and Obama with regard to unilateral declaration of a state. And a source close to Fayyad said there was no such deal.

I don’t know how much credence can be given to the denial of the Fayyad associate.  What matters more is this additional wrinkle in the situation:

Apparently Abbas is upset because he says the US is trying to replace him with Fayyad. (There’s a reasonable likelihood that this is an accurate perception, as Fayyad is the darling of the Western nations).  

Said the PA official:

“The Americans should know that Fayyad is the prime minister and not the president. Any attempt to bypass President Abbas will fail, because he’s the only address.

“There’s a feeling that the Americans have reached a decision to turn Fayyad into the president of the Palestinian Authority.  This has created tensions between the two men.”

(In Israel the “only address” is the prime minister, and the presidency is a ceremonial position.   In the PA, the prime minister serves at the pleasure of the president.)

Tension between the two men, and a desire by Abbas to undercut any deal that might have been made between Fayyad and Obama, can only serve us well in this instance.

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Meanwhile, the Post ran another article that attempted to shed light on the legal aspects of such a unilateral declaration.  The point presumably of greatest significance is that a unilateral declaration of statehood would represent a material breach of Oslo, which prohibits change in the status of the West Bank and Gaza pending the outcome of permanent status negotiations.  (Apparently our changing the status of Gaza “didn’t count,” as we were surrendering something.)

Frankly, I don’t believe for a second that the Palestinians would care if they breached Oslo.  And there would certainly be nations that would go along.  

The big question is whether Obama would.  Dan Diker, foreign policy analyst at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, is cited as being concerned that the American administration, weary with the stalled negotiations, might be headed in that direction. 

Other analysts, however, are more dubious about this because the US was a signatory to Oslo.

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From my perspective what is most pertinent is this: Hebrew University Professor Emeritus Ruth Lapidot says that there is no international body or institution that recognizes states.  Individual countries do so according to their own considerations.  Thus, I am assuming, the Security Council, while it might theoretically override resolutions 242 and 373, could not put an official stamp of recognition on a unilaterally declared Palestinian state.  Presumably — barring a very unlikely situation in which some other resolution substituted for this recognition — there is no way in which international troops would be sent in via chapter 7.

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Balagan, which means, roughly, confusion, mess, or muddle, is a lovely and oft-used Hebrew word.  There is no adequate one-word translation into English.  And right now that’s what we’re seeing with all of the above: a massive balagan.

So if you have found what I’ve written confusing, take heart.  It’s not because your capacity to understand is deficient, but rather because the situation is confused in a major way.  And who knows what tomorrow brings.

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Prime Minister Netanyahu did speak at the General Assembly today, although I have no information on what was said.

What I do know is that he was heckled by a couple of people over Gaza.  Very sad indeed.  Jokingly, he said that he received a better reception at the UN.

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Tonight Netanyahu and Obama will be meeting at the White House.  I confess that I shudder a bit at the prospect.

Ethan Bronner of the NY Times has written, “when Secretary of State Clinton was in Jerusalem last week, she asked Mr. Netanyahu to include in negotiating guidelines specific references to the creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders and Jerusalem. He declined.” (Thanks Winkie!)

This is apparently the reason why it took Obama so long to agree to see Netanyahu.  The word was that he wanted something in return for the visit, but I trust that this was not it.

We need to pray for the backbone of our prime minister, who is walking into the lion’s den. Obama’s maximalist position is quite clear.  We know what we’re dealing with.

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“The Good News Corner”

My readers are all familiar with the claims being regularly made by Muslims that we are digging under the Al Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount in an attempt to make it collapse.

Recently, the Western Wall Heritage Foundation held a special tour to which a broad spectrum of officials was invited to see for themselves what sort of excavation work is actually being done.  All testified that they saw no sign of digging under the Mount.

Unfortunately, a similar invitation to the Muslim Wakf (Trust) was turned down because “we will not receive approval from settlers to enter a Muslim-owned area.”  Anything to avoid seeing the reality, I suppose. There are negotiations going on that may help them to change their minds; additionally, representatives of Arab countries may be brought in to witness the excavations first hand.

The good news is what is going on in those excavations.  The work, which has been in progress for over four years, begins in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City and connects to the Western Wall tunnels (which run adjacent to and not under the Mount).  At this point the digging has gone down 12 meters and it is anticipated will go another four.  Important archeological remains from the First Temple have been uncovered.

The tunnels (which are also amazing):

 

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